> Society does this every day and people think nothing of it if the hardware is a fentanyl lab or a uranium enrichment facility.
There's a big difference between laws preventing you from doing those things in the privacy of your own home, and laws preventing you from entertaining or expressing certain ideas or beliefs in the privacy of your own home. Freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, are generally understood to be fundamental human rights, while "freedom to synthesise fentanyl" or "freedom to enrich uranium" are not. Software is ultimately a form of literature (that's where its protection under copyright law comes from), and hence is directly connected with freedom of expression; AIs are ultimately just software too, so the same applies to them.
Source code is a form of literature; software-being-executed is not. It might be permissible for me to write a program that steals credentials and holds them for ransom, but actually running it would not be. Thus I don’t see why it would be unbelievable that training or inference of large language models might, plausibly, be limited in some way by law.
> It might be permissible for me to write a program that steals credentials and holds them for ransom, but actually running it would not be.
Because that’s communicating with a third party, no longer limited to the privacy of your own home. Fraud, extortion, etc, go beyond the bounds of accepted free expression.
> Thus I don’t see why it would be unbelievable that training or inference of large language models might, plausibly, be limited in some way by law.
What’s the fundamental difference between training an AI to generate propaganda and generating it by hand? If freedom of expression protects the latter, why does it not protect the former too?
OK, what about this? It’s also illegal to use a AI model to generate realistic child pornography, even in the privacy of your own home.
> If freedom of expression protects the latter, why does it not protect the former too?
It’s legal for me to achieve altered states via meditation; why is it illegal to use LSD? Arguably it shouldn’t be, but it is. It seems like methods matter, even when it comes to expression.
> OK, what about this? It’s also illegal to use a AI model to generate realistic child pornography, even in the privacy of your own home.
False in the US - in the 2002 case of Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the Supreme Court ruled that “virtual child pornography” is protected by the 1st Amendment.
True in some other jurisdictions, including my own country (Australia). However, I think Australian laws on this topic go way too far - in Australia, people have been convicted of child pornography offences purely for publishing offensive remarks about child abuse victims. While I agree it is wrong to make such remarks, I think it is massive overkill to prosecute them as child pornography.
> in Australia, people have been convicted of child pornography offences purely for publishing offensive remarks about child abuse victims.
I'd love to see a cite to the Court case on this - while I don't doubt that you've heard this it does sound an awful lot like a Sky 'News' after Dark pearl clutching misrepresentation of an almost but not quite actual event.
I have no sympathy for the defendant, who is absolute scum of the earth. But, as a matter of principle, I don’t think it is right that posting an offensive Facebook comment is legally the same offence (“producing child exploitation material”) as filming heinous crimes against children. If they’d prosecuted him for harassment instead-he’s currently facing trial on harassment charges against the same victim-I’d have no objection.
> A former teacher at a private girls school in Hobart will return to jail after describing a sexual relationship with a former student as "awesome" on social media.
It's the after that does a lot of lifting there, but it's certainly not "because". The article specifically notes:
> Nicolaas Ockert Bester, 63, has been sentenced to four months in jail for producing child exploitation material.
and I have a certain suspicion that his comment attracted attention resulting in charges based on fresh unearthed and "off book" evidence - off book in the sense that it was discussed in Court but not made public due to small towns and personal details of those involved who may now still be under age.
(ie. he's been at it again and that's not being reported to keep eyes from what is likely a small circle of potential victims)
I'm not trying to pick a fight here but there's often an information gap in cases involving children here in Australia, in my opinion largely for very good reasons.
Unless the appeal court is suppressing the real story (an idea I find unbelievable), he was literally convicted of a child pornography offence on the basis of nothing more than making an offensive Facebook comment:
> In late February 2015 the applicant was involved in an on-line Facebook discussion about a political issue... In the course of that exchange, the applicant posted the following comment:
[I'll omit it, but you can find it quoted in the judgement, and the media appears to have filled in much or all of the "Offensive words omitted" part]
> The writing of that message constituted the offence for which the learned magistrate sentenced the applicant to 4 months' imprisonment. By creating that message, he contravened s 72A(a) of the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Enforcement Act. That provision reads as follows: "A person must not —
> (a) make or reproduce child exploitation material; or
> The words that the applicant wrote constituted material that described his former student, a person under the age of 18 years, in relation to their sexual activity, in a way that a reasonable person would regard as being offensive. His comment therefore constituted "child exploitation material" as defined.
This isn't what you call "Sky 'News' after Dark pearl clutching misrepresentation of an almost but not quite actual event" – it is literally what happened.
And as I said, Bester is scum, but the principle of the matter is concerning. The law, as drafted by Parliament and interpreted by the Courts, seems rather over-broad. And while this case was about Tasmanian state law specifically, laws in other Australian jurisdictions are rather similar.
( EDIT: Thanks for the link and +1 for that, it's a case worthy of discussion )
I read you linked and was published by the court in full, as you also read it you'll note there are references to unpublished material
( you wrote:
> I'll omit it, but you can find it quoted in the judgement, and the media appears to have filled in ...
whereas the court noted:
> 3. "Zip up (etc...)" [Offensive words omitted.]
ie: the court left out portions of what was posted. Further:
> 7. the Mercury newspaper reported the applicant's comments in part ...
> 25. some of the words written by the applicant were not published by the Mercury .. Those words will be redacted when these reasons are made available for publication.
)
I agree that on the face of things it appears as thought the judgement has been made exclusively on the fact of the offender commenting on a prior case.
I disagree that this is as simple as "conviction for describing underage sex as Awesome on Facebook".
It is laid out at length that the offender had previously preyed upon the person he made comment about, further that these later comments caused further duress to that same victim, and reference was made to his prior conviction (which carried stringent terms about staying clear of underage girls in general and his prior victim(s?) specificly, associating with others of the same ilk, and avoiding patterns of prior behaviour, etc.)
This is not a case of "some average Australian" making comments about underage sex on the internet - such things happen daily.
This is a specific case of an actual prior offender making public utterances about a former victim after a conviction that included a jail term and behavioural advisories. *
( * I assume on the grounds that similar cases in Western Australia's children court include strong "stay the F. away from your victims" conditions )
I would find this concerning if this was a case that saw a random citizen charged, I don't find it concerning that these specific set of circumstances were bought under consideration and after deliberation a prior offender has been given a message that this kind of behaviour is not okay.
Real life is rarely clear cut and the law constantly has to deal with edge cases.
I think we have to distinguish between (1) the elements of the actual crime of which he was convicted, (2) sentencing factors, (3) prosecutorial discretion.
His prior criminal acts, the impact he had on his victim, etc, are all relevant to (2) and (3), but not to (1).
Regarding (3), I honestly don't feel very comfortable with the idea "let's have massively over-broad laws, but trust prosecutors to only use them against people who really deserve it". Should I put that much trust in prosecutors? My uncle is the second most senior prosecutor in Victoria, and from what I know of him, I honestly believe his heart is in the right place. On the other hand, just this last week Shane Drumgold has been giving everyone a rather poor impression of himself. But, putting personalities aside, in principle, I just don't like it. Maybe some degree of it is inevitable, but I feel like in this area of law we've taken it much further than we ever should have.
If they had criminalised convicted sex offenders publicly defaming their victims–I wouldn't have a problem with such a law, or with him being prosecuted under it. That would be a narrower law, vastly more defensible, vastly less concerning.
But by the letter of the law under which he was actually convicted, he would have committed the exact same offence if he'd just written that comment in his private diary, with no intention to ever show it to anybody. Now, if that was the scenario (let's assume they found his diary in a search), quite possibly the police/DPP would have decided against charging him – but there's no guarantee of that. In the event they did charge him, the sentence would have been significantly more lenient. But the actual criminal conviction would have been exactly the same.
The idea that mere writing words in a private diary is the same crime as filming the actual rape of children – including the former in the offence seems (to me) to belittle the heinousness of the latter.
And I'm not comfortable with the idea that a person can commit a crime just by putting words in their private diary – even if they are absolute unrepentant scum like Bester – as I said, it is about the principle, not the worth of the person to whom it is applied.
Society does this every day and people think nothing of it if the hardware is a fentanyl lab or a uranium enrichment facility.